Hugging Molly
by lunarlychallenged
Summary: Arthur wasn't a fan of hugs, per se, but he was hearing too much about how spectacular Molly was at it to keep it off his mind.


_February 1st_

Arthur Weasley had never been fond of hugs, persay, but he hadn't been able to get them out of his mind for the past week. It wasn't even the concept of hugs in general. He could have handled that easily enough. It seemed like everywhere he went, people mentioned how spectacular Molly Prewitt's hugs were.

"I always love winter," said a girl at his table in the Great Hall. "When I get cold, I ask Molly for a hug, and it warms me right up every time."

"Mols is the only person I know who gives _real_ hugs," Bilius had grudgingly admitted while the two fifth years played Wizard Chess in the Common Room. "It's like she hugs you with her entire body."

When Molly walked up to him, all smiles, before Transfiguration started, he couldn't help but hear the words of his schoolmates echoing around his head.

"Can I sit here?" She asked him every time they had this class, always gesturing to where her two best friends sat giggling at the table in front of him. She was always the odd one out, and her friends always seemed delighted about it. The first time they had stranded her, her cheeks had been very pink the entire time. At first he had thought that the shine in her eyes had been tears, but nothing about the way she acted seemed sad. Bashful, maybe. Nervous, almost certainly. But Molly was one of the only people who seemed to genuinely enjoy talking to him, and Molly was one of the only people he was excited to talk to.

"Help yourself," he said for the umpteenth time that year. She collapsed into the chair like it was the most delightful thing she could possibly imagine doing. That was how she did everything, and Arthur couldn't help admiring it. She treated everything like it was her greatest desire, be it eating or homework or talking to him.

"How was Muggle Studies?" She leaned her cheek against one small hand and gazed raptly at him.

He smiled. "We practiced playing Muggle card games today." He launched into an explanation of a game they called Gold Fish, though he didn't understand why they would call it that. As much as his mind buzzed with delight as he imagined Muggles sitting around a table and playing, a small part of him focused on her small hand. That small part of him thought that it was a very fine hand, and that part of him wished terribly that there was a reason for him to hold it. It was a very new thought that made his stomach twist a little.

Arthur had always thought that Molly was cute, of course. She looked like she was really alive, and for Arthur, who sometimes forgot that he was alive in the midst of all of the projects he tinkered with, the liveliness that she infected the world with was almost like a drug. It had just always been a drug that he enjoyed recreationally, but these past few days had made it seem far more necessary. She was a thought that niggled at the back of his mind, unwelcome but somehow enjoyable all the same.

 _February 6th_

"Arthur!"

The hiss was very quiet, but it was awfully sharp. His head snapped up from the light bulb he was doodling on the parchment that ought to have been used for an essay about the Giant Wars. Molly Prewitt's red hair was bright against the dusty books about the uses of lavender in potions. She jerked her head impatiently towards the window in the back corner. He frowned, confused, but got up to follow her out of sight.

She hopped from one foot to the other eagerly as he approached. "A little birdie told me it's your birthday today," she beamed.

He smiled helplessly, struggling to comprehend what she had said in the light of her smile. "Hmm? Oh, yeah, who told you?"

She waved him of impatiently. "Arthur! You should have told me yourself!"

He shrugged, the tips of his ears going a little pink. "I didn't think it mattered." It wasn't a lie. His birthday had always been a small family affair, or at least as small as affairs could be in a family as large as his own. He and Molly, friendly as they were, were not so close that he expected her to care about a birthday as minor as his fifteenth.

Molly pulled a small bag out of the folds of her robes. His brow creased as he looked at it. The bag itself was nothing fancy; a simple red paper bag with some ribbon carefully curled around the handles. His spectacled eyes flickered between the bag and Molly's suddenly nervous face.

"Well?" she demanded. She held it out a little further, and only then did it click into place that she had gotten him a present. When he reached for it, his calloused fingers brushed against her soft ones. Tingles spread from his fingertips to his heart to his belly, dancing a jig as he struggled not to smile.

"You didn't have to," he said distantly.

She tutted. "It's not much, but everybody should get to celebrate their birthday."

At the top of the bag was a small package of fudge.

"I made it in the kitchens last night," she said as he stared. "I didn't know what your favorite flavor was, but I figured that everybody loves chocolate-"

"It's wonderful," he said softly. It could have been any flavor and he still would have thought that it was to die for.

Next, he pulled out a pair of rather lumpy scarlet and gold mittens. He thought the blobs on the tops were supposed to be lions, but he couldn't be sure that they weren't badly done suns.

"I've been learning to knit," she said with pride. "I'm not very good yet, but I'm working very hard at it."

He slipped them on. The mittens were scratchy and oddly shaped, but he wiggled his fingers at her. "Perfect fit."

He went to fold up the bag, but she shook her head vigorously. Her hair wobbled madly as she spoke. "There's one more thing!"

At the very bottom of the bag, small and thin, was a grey plastic stick. He pulled it out, eyes widening, and all breath left his body.

"Muggles call them 'pens'," she said, fingers twisting anxiously around her cloak.

His lips curled in a manic grin. He wrapped one hand around the back of her neck and yanked her toward him without thinking, ignoring her surprised squeak as he plastered his lips against the crown of her head before rushing off to test out the pen on the abandoned parchment at his table. Had he turned back to look at her, Arthur would have seen a bewildered Molly Prewitt, cheeks blazing and eyes alight, wrapping her arms around herself in a hug that perhaps she might have given him if he had paused for half a second to thank her properly.

 _February 14th_

It had started with the desire for a hug, certainly, but now Arthur was fit to burst with the desire to touch Molly all the time. He was overly conscious of her presence _all the time_.

During every Transfiguration lesson since his birthday, he hadn't been able to pay any attention to the professor because of the way her thigh pressed against his. Had it always done that? She was a very soft girl, all curves and smoothed edges, so she very well may have always been pushed up against him at their tiny table. If so, he had been so caught up in everything happening inside his head that he had been completely blind to what was real. Her leg touched his, and it somehow seemed far too intimate for a classroom setting.

His mind would frequently wander to the brief feeling of his lips against her hair. He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to kiss her for real. If he was one of his brothers, he probably would have done. If he was his father, who had successfully wooed one of the infamous Black sisters, he probably would have done. Instead he was Arthur Weasley, and the only things that had ever responded to his touch were inanimate objects that he probably shouldn't have been tinkering with in the first place. Instead he was Arthur Weasley, who had always considered himself lucky if somebody was willing to put up with him as a friend at all. Molly had been his greatest stroke of luck, so of _course_ he would wind up wanting to be with her in a decidedly non-friendly way.

Determined not to get ahead of himself, he thought he would focus on hugging her first.

He kept his head low during breakfast. There was a low, warm buzz in the Great Hall. There had been a Hogsmeade trip on Friday, but it hadn't sapped the energy that only teenagers on Valentine's Day can give off. The buzz rose to a roar when the owls swooped in. Some carried newspapers or letters from families, but others carried boxes of chocolates or cards from secret admirers. Even those who knew that nothing was coming for them inevitably still hoped for something, anything, that would make the stress of being single on a holiday for lovers dissipate.

Arthur allowed his eyes to dart to Molly for the first time that morning just as one of the school owls dropped a small card into her lap. Her face went from carefully blank to cautiously delighted as her friends gave encouraging coos for her to open it. Her lips silently mouthed the words he had hurriedly written in the Owlery that morning before breakfast. He hadn't trusted himself to send it if he thought too long, so he hadn't wasted his courage on something poetic or romantic.

 _You were the best part of my birthday. I hope you'll be the best part of my Valentine's Day too._

 _Arthur_

He kept his eyes glued to his eggs, cheeks flaming, when he felt her eyes settle on him. He would talk to her later, he promised himself. He could invite her on a walk, or to the kitchens, or to study in the library. Later, when nobody was watching.

Maybe that would have been a reassuring thought, had the entirety of the Gryffindor table not been watching him as whispers about Molly's card spread. Bilius clapped one hand against Arthur's back when he walked by to talk to a Ravenclaw girl he fancied. Molly's friends shot him knowing smiles all through the meal. Smiles that he realized he recognized from months of Transfiguration lessons.

Finally, giving up on his breakfast, Arthur decided that his best bet was to leave. He could hide in bed until the talk died down. Surely people would be done acting smug by dinner. If not, maybe he could just starve. He walked hurriedly toward the doors, shoulders hunching all the way to his ears. Just as his heart started to calm at the thought of leaving the Great Hall, a set of warm arms wrapped around his waist from behind.

Looking down, he saw the hands he had watched so carefully for the past few weeks. A bashful smile graced his face, and those watching were surprised to think that Arthur Weasley, when happy, was sort of handsome. He pressed his own arms against Molly's to return the hug as best he could. Hours of wondering had not done her a bit of justice. He was warmed to the tips of his toes; his back creaked a little from the strength of it; she leaned all of herself into all of him; he didn't think that he had ever felt so painfully and overwhelmingly human as he did in that moment.

"Happy Valentine's," she mumbled into the fabric of his sweater vest. He could feel her smothering a smile into his back, but he didn't bother hiding his.

"Do you want to go to the kitchens later?"

She nodded, tightening her hold a little before releasing him. She didn't say anything when she walked back to the table, and he didn't try to stop her. Arthur tilted his head back to smile at the ceiling.

He thought that he might love hugs, just a little.


End file.
